


Mortality is Relative

by MaryPSue



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Demon!Ford, Established Relationship, Ficlet Collection, Human!Bill, M/M, Transformation, demon!stan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 03:16:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11118792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: The Pines twins classic were Bill's, and no way was that jerk Death getting anywhere near them. Not if Bill had anything to say about it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [agentquinn](agentquinn.tumblr.com) shared a bunch of [billford AU ideas](http://agentquinn.tumblr.com/post/148708009111/do-you-have-any-billford-aus-that-you-havent) and I had to write a quick something for this one because it is good and I am Predictable. This ended up barely having anything to do with Ford at all and being mostly about Stan and Bill antagonising each other. Go figure.

There was something about the hospital bed that made Ford look like an old man.

Stan shifted in the uncomfortably square, uncomfortably wide chair by the window, awkwardly trying to act like he wasn’t just sitting here staring at his unconscious twin. Not like there was anyone else here to impress anyway. The doctors had given their little speech over an hour ago, how there was nothing more they could do now, just needing to wait, see how much damage the seizures had done. They’d checked everything that could be checked and adjusted everything that needed adjusting, and had left Stan alone with the quiet beeping of some monitor or something and the steady rise and fall of Ford’s chest.

It wasn’t a huge bed, but Ford looked small and lost in the drifts of white sheets. Stan wasn’t sure when his brother’s hair had got so white, but it almost vanished against the pillows. His cheeks hollowed out without anger or enthusiasm to inflate them, diminishing the jawline Stan and Ford had both inherited from their father - and how many years had the old bastard been dead, now? How old had he been when he’d finally kicked the bucket? Why were Stan’s thoughts wandering in that direction, now, of all times? 

Stan forced himself to turn away, looking out the window instead of at Ford’s shrivelled, worried face buried in crisp sheets and pillows. Maybe he should go home. The kids - well, hardly kids anymore, but they’d always be the fresh-faced twelve-year-olds who’d stepped off that bus that first summer to Stan - were flying in in the morning, they’d need the attic set up for them when they got in. And somebody should dry-dock the Stan O’ War II and grab some of Ford’s things, in case this was going to be a long stay.

Stan couldn’t bring himself to admit that, even though he’d been told by at least two doctors that it wasn’t likely Ford would wake up again tonight, he still didn’t want to leave in case his twin woke up and found himself alone.

He’d, unthinkingly, gone back to watching Ford sleep and wondering morbidly about what might be left of his brother when Ford woke up -  _if_  Ford woke up - when Stan realised it wasn’t just an illusion of age and hospital bed. Ford was literally fading into translucence right in front of his eyes. 

“WELL WELL WELL! AREN’T YOU TWO A SORRY SIGHT!”

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, but Stan still jumped to his feet, nearly falling back into the uncomfortable chair when a wave of vertigo washed over him. “You! What’re you doing to him?”

The triangle that burst into existence somehow didn’t look quite so bright a yellow as usual, and Stan wasn’t sure if the way parts of it seemed to vanish and reappear were due to it actually falling apart before his eyes, or the weird way his vision was starting to swim. “GRAMMAR, STANLEY! IT’S ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE’ IN THE PAST TENSE!” Bill Cipher winked - or, at least, blinked his single staring eye - and tucked the end of his cane under Stan’s chin, giving a tap that was just slightly too hard for friendly teasing. “AND YOU GOT YOUR PRONOUNS CONFUSED THERE TOO! HERE, TRY IT AGAIN LIKE THIS: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO  _US_.”

“You -” Stan struggled to find a curse strong enough for the accursed geometric figure hovering - standing? - in front of him through the fog that was pouring in through the top of his skull. No, not fog, exactly. White noise? “You son of a - of a _rectangle_ , you put my brother here! I knew we shouldn’t’ve trusted you, I knew he never shoulda given you a second chance -" 

He reached out, with trembling 

_fists/claws/boxing mitts_  

and grabbed Bill by the bow tie, shaking him so hard that a few bricks fell out. The hospital room was spinning wildly around him now, or maybe he was the one who was spinning, but Bill felt solid and steady under Stan’s fingers and that was part of why Stan dug them in. "You put him back,” he growled

_seven dimensions shake and an eighth collapses under the reverberations_

, “or so help me I’ll take you apart brick by two-dimensional brick!”

There was something almost like genuine concern in the look in Bill’s single eye. “SORRY, FEZ, NO CAN DO! BUT HEY! YOU WON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THAT BEAUTIFUL BRAIN OF HIS! Or thoSE POWERFUL FIsts of yOURS! YOU TwO SHOULD really BE THANKING me, it’s not just aNY MORTALS I’d do something like this FOr!”

There was something wrong with Bill’s voice. There was something wrong with  _Bill_. His bricks were shedding at an alarming rate now and oozing something that looked uncomfortably like blood from the gaps between them, the reverb vanishing from his voice, that huge single eye turning bloodshot and weepy. Stan let go and backed away, suddenly vaguely disgusted to be touching something so covered in…fluids. Geometry wasn’t supposed to be sticky.

Backing away, though, turned out to be the worst idea Stan could’ve had. The vertigo returned, sudden and nearly overwhelming, and he struggled to figure out which way was

_forward/clockwise/sidelong/widdershins_

up. It felt like the times he’d got the portal going and gravity had disappeared, only there were a whole bunch of new directions as well as the usual up-down left-right port-starboard stuff, and he was bouncing around just trying to figure out which one he wanted to go in. And also his brain was on fire.

Was this a seizure? Was this what Ford had felt in his last few seconds of consciousness?

“If you’re trying to take us out so you can get at those kids,” Stan

_roared/whispered/intoned/etched in a mile of glass on the surface of Halcyon Π/wrote into the genetic code of an entire species of parasitic ants_

promised, “I’ll come back from the dead to kick your right angles.” He thought for a moment, and added, “All three of them.”

He really didn’t feel right. Felt like the first few days at sea when he hadn’t got his legs under him yet. Felt like the first time there’d been a storm and the waves had knocked him out of sync with the movement of the boat. Felt like 

_vibrating out of sync with the physical world_

really vicious sea-sickness, actually.

There was something that maybe might have been a distant relative of regret, or at least something that looked like it if you squinted just right in the right half-light, in Bill’s voice as he said, “WOn’t haVe those fOR Too much longer!” He smiled - and since when did Bill Cipher have a mouth that wasn’t also his eye - eyes? “YOU REALLY SHOuld be thanking me, though! I just solved all our problems!”

“How is any of this solving anyone’s problems?”

Bill coughed into a black-gloved hand. “Well, the most important problem, anyway! You know, that pesky one where I’m imMORTAL and you two areN’T?”

Stan opened his mouth to say - something, anything - but before he could even start to form words something heaved violently behind his navel and he was retching. What spilled out over his - hands? His hands? Not his hands, one moment they were his and then the next they were black and clawed and then the next they sported six fingers and then the next they were abstract mathematical concepts and oh,  _shit_  - wasn’t vomit, not how he was expecting it, just brightly-coloured strands of protein and spiralling helices and, and oh, oh shit, oh shit whatever it was was breaking him down to his smallest component parts from the inside out -

“What did you  _do_ ,” Stan managed to gasp, in between bits of colour-coded viscera and complex equations.

Bill’s smile somehow managed to be every bit as brilliant as the one he’d always implied with his single eye. “See you on the other side, Stanley.”

The hospital room unspooled around him, and Stan Pines was alone.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, Sixer. Know how many licks it takes to get to the centre of a Tootsie Pop?”

Stanford doesn’t move, none of his hovering eyes so much as flickering in Bill’s direction. “Calculating based on average candy thickness and human tongue strength, approximately one thousand, four hundred, and twenty-seven.”

“Killjoy,” Bill grumbles into the rough material of the sofa he’s sprawled himself out across, face-down in the cushions. 

“I’m more than aware that you were hoping to turn it into an innuendo,” Stanford says. It’s not exactly a voice, more like the voice that Bill hears saying his own thoughts in the back of his head sometimes now. The only real difference is that Ford sounds a lot more like Ford and a lot less like Bill.

“Okay, mister know-it-all,” Bill mutters into the couch cushion, and finally, finally, one of the drifting eyes hovering around Ford’s head slides sidelong to give Bill an assessing once-over, before turning instead to something Bill can’t see. Bill hopes it’s at least something good, like the sloth fights on ^6(7) or that one TV show about the duck.

“Actually, yes, I  _do_  know it all,” Ford says, and there’s a hint of self-satisfied amusement bleeding into his previous deadpan tone. He still doesn’t turn to face Bill, no matter how loudly Bill sighs or how dramatically Bill drapes himself over the sofa. It’s ridiculous. What could possibly be more interesting or appealing than paying attention to Bill? Bill certainly doesn’t know. He doesn’t know lots of things. And his stupid nose hurts where he’s mashing it into the sofa cushion. “I also know that exploring it all would be infinitely more enjoyable if you would stop making a nuisance of yourself.”

Bill pulls his face out of the sofa, flipping over onto his back and letting all his stupid human limbs flop wherever, starfish-like, spreadeagled across the back and arm of the sofa and dangling down to the floor. A huge gust of air  _whoofs_  out of his lungs, and he has to suck in another one before he can talk again. “Wow, Fordsy, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were actually calling me annoying!”

Two of the hovering eyes swivel in Bill’s direction this time and linger there, glaring. Bill grins as wide as he can with this tiny blunt-toothed mouth, tucks a hand behind his head and arches his back. “C’mon, Sixer, draw me like one of your French anomalies.”

Bill’s expecting Ford to get all prickly and bent out of shape, make a fuss about leaving him alone so he can concentrate, so Bill can needle him more and more until he has all of Ford’s attention. He is not expecting the eyes whose gaze he’d finally managed to attract to roll in unison and turn away from him again, for Ford to go on floating in motionless silence, ignoring Bill.

“Hey!” Bill demands, sitting upright on the sofa. “What, didja find something more  _interesting_  than me to look at?”

He doesn’t actually see the movement - his stupid useless ocular nerves are slow, his stupid useless neurons are even slower, this stupid ridiculous lump of meat just plain isn’t up to the standards Bill had for a body to house him,  _pathetic_  - but suddenly all of Ford’s eyes are fixed on Bill. Even the three that are still set in something that resembles a face are staring at Bill from behind the glasses Ford still insists on manifesting even though he clearly doesn’t need them for anything.

Attention was what Bill wanted, but now that he’s on the recceiving end of it, he’s kind of ready for Ford to go back to ignoring him. This stupid sack of bone and nerves that has the audacity to call itself his body is getting all twitchy and covered in tiny bumps. What kind of fear response even is that, anyway? What use is it?  _Humans!_

The rest of Ford swivels to face Bill as well, and it strikes Bill again just how stupid and flimsy his entire ocular system is. He can’t even get a proper grasp on what Fordsy looks like anymore, just an impression of something vaguely human-shaped and a lot of darkness. Oh, and eyes. The eyes, at least, don’t go bleeding into the infra-black on him, though under their scrutiny, Bill almost wishes they would.

“Yes,” Ford says, simply, and it takes Bill a moment to remember the question he’d asked. “The multiverse is stuffed full of things infinitely more interesting than a washed-up ex-demon turned mundane, single-life-spanned, dimensionally-limited, temporally-bound, blind, deaf, whiny two-eyed sack of barely-cogitating meat.”

There is barely anything left that resembles human in Ford now. Hundreds of bright black eyes stare blankly down at Bill from a void he can’t fit whole into this stupid primitive ball of noodly fat and lightning that has to do all his thinking for him. Ford doesn’t seem angry, or even particularly irritated, and that makes it worse, somehow. Bill is uncomfortably aware of how fragile, how ridiculously temporary, the bundle of muscle and organ and bone currently housing his consciousness is. And the way Sixer’s looking at him, it’s like Bill’s already gone, already eaten into nothing by slow oxidization and that bullshit scam called ‘time’. Like Bill’s not even worth getting irritated over. Like Bill’s barely even  _there_.

“So please stop boring me and let me get back to examining things that are actually interesting,” Ford says, the void of him starting to dissolve, eyes winking closed like dying stars. It takes Bill a second to process, and by the time his stupid soggy grey matter catches up with his eyes, Ford is gone.

“No,  _fuck_  you, you don’t get to say that to me -” Bill starts to shout, jumping up from the sofa -

He feels a jolt, and snaps one eye open. He’s lying facedown in the sofa cushions, butt in the air, nose mashed into the seat. There’s a garbled noise dying on his tongue and a puddle of drool sticking to his cheek.  _Gross._

Ford is nowhere, but there’s no way Bill’s letting him just get away with this. It doesn’t take long to gather up an armful of candles and build a crude circle on the living room carpet. Bill burns his fingertips a few times getting them lit - one of those times is even an accident - but eventually he has a passable summoning circle spread out. 

Ford barely has time to materialize in the centre of the circle - looking a whole lot more human than the last time Bill saw him, though sheesh, the guy’s really gotta learn to get that whole eye-swarm thing under control - before Bill is shouting. “I’m  _boring_ , huh?”

“Bill, what -” Ford starts, and Bill slaps a hand over where Ford’s mouth should be, though he gets the feeling Ford isn’t really using it for any of its intended purposes right now. 

“No, shut up.  _Everything you have now_  came from me. Me! Bill Cipher! The centre of your mediocre _one-horse universe_! So don’t you ever,  _ever_  call me boring  _ever again_. Got it?”

Bill stops. His chest is doing that dumb heaving thing, like he’s just done something to exert this stupid waste of protein pretending to be his body, instead of just yelling a bit. And Ford doesn’t look appropriately contrite. Actually, if Bill had to say what he looks like, he’d probably settle somewhere between ‘confused’ and ‘slowly realising the pun’. 

“Bill,” Ford says, and Bill was right, he’s only using that mouth for show. Bill glares at the swarm of eyes, wondering if he can pinpoint which one the voice is coming from, knowing it doesn’t matter. He should just grab one at random and eat it, right now. That’d show Fordsy who’s boring, right? “Did you have a nightmare?”

Nope, eating one of his floating eyeballs raw in front of him is too good for Ford. Bill will think of something  _better_. “I  _am_ a nightmare,” he growls, giving Ford a shove.

Amusement is definitely winning over confusion in Ford’s voice as he says, “Well, I can’t disagree with that. But I did watch you fall asleep on that sofa in what appeared to be a phenomenally uncomfortable position. That was the last time we spoke, and I definitely didn’t call you boring.”

“All right, you jerk, if it  _was_  a nightmare, that still means you had your twelve abnormally long fingers all over it!”

“Bill, sometimes humans just have nightmares,” Ford says, patiently, and Bill starts reconsidering his earlier decision about not eyeball-eating. “That’s part of why we -” He stops, blinks a few times, the clusters of eyes orbiting his head winking in and out of existence before drawing in close to nest in the mess of his hair. “Why  _you_  sleep. To process information, memories, imagined scenarios, for storage in long-term memory. It doesn’t mean anything, just random neurons firing.”

He raises a hand, and the fingers that gently wrap around Bill’s wrist and pull it away from his face are just a little too long to look properly human. “But if it will make you feel better, o most awe-inspiring, fascinating muse of mine…you are a great number of things, not all of them complimentary, but I can say with confidence that ‘boring’ is never one of them.”

“Okay good,” Bill says, and flops forward to lean his face against Ford’s chest. For a stomach-lurching second he’s falling through thin air, then he’s eyeball-deep in lungs as a ribcage curls around them, then he’s got his nose buried in a warm soft sweater that smells of coffee and nerd. “I was just testing you. You pass, smart guy. For now,” he adds sternly, with a glare up at the eyes set in the shape Ford’s using as a face.

Ford hums, and it rumbles nicely through the chest he’s constructed for Bill to rest against. “Warn me next time you intend to fall on me. You know I don’t usually have much physical under the coat.”

“Hrmph.” Bill spins to press his back against Ford’s chest, reaching out to grab both of Ford’s wrists and wrap Ford’s arms around him like a blanket. “You don’t have to build it from scratch every single time, sheesh. Just think ‘sweater’ and then fill it in.”

“Is that why there were bones in your hat?”

Bill shrugs. “I dunno, what’s usually in a hat?”

“People’s heads.” There’s a moment of quiet, a soft noise just on the edge of hearing, and Ford adds, thoughtfully, “Rabbits, sometimes.”

“And you think bones in one are weird. Gimme a break.” Bill snuggles back further, pressing an ear against Ford’s sweater in search of the sound he’d heard in the quiet. “Hey, you put a heart in this baby! A working one!”

“You said you missed the beat,” Ford says. There’s a hint of the old anxiety, the old eagerness to please, in his voice, like Bill’s still the omnipotent being of unfathomable knowledge and power in this relationship, and Bill basks in it like sunlight.

“You should keep it. It’s a good look on you. Or a good sound on you.” Bill tilts his head back, giving Ford the sweetest smile he can manage. “Hey, Sixer, with all your shiny new cosmic knowledge, answer me this one - how many licks does it take to get to the centre of a Tootsie Pop?”


End file.
